


The Marrow of Life

by joan_waterhouse



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Introspection, M/M, Nature, hermitism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-12
Updated: 2011-11-12
Packaged: 2017-10-26 00:12:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/276421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joan_waterhouse/pseuds/joan_waterhouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gwaine had longed for solitude when he had made his way here. Solitude and silence. But nobody is ever truly alone. There's always something. Or nothing. Which, as many will certify, is even more unsettling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Marrow of Life

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted at the 2011 round of the prompt fest [here](http://merlin-muses.livejournal.com/29521.html).  
> The title is taken from Henry David Thoreau's Walden.  
> Thank you, dear , for this inspiring prompt. I hope you like what I did with it. ^-^  
> Thank you also to my beta, , for useful hints and spotting of embarrassing SPaG errors! ♥

Future accounts will claim: _The twelfth battle was on Badon Hill and in it nine hundred and sixty men fell in one day, from a single charge of Arthur's, and no-one laid them low save he alone._1

This, of course, was an exaggeration. Or, rather, not so much an exaggeration as a misrepresentation of events. Nine hundred and sixty might have been a close enough estimate of fallen enemy fighters, but their deaths could not be rightfully attributed to a single man; at least not all of them. Most importantly, if a single man was responsible for the majority of these casualties it most certainly was not Arthur.

*

 

Gwaine stood outside his hut hoping for grey clouds, for silvery raindrops, for dull weather to dull his too-bright thoughts. But the leaves had turned a glowing red, and the evening sky mirrored their colour. He remembered days when he would have thought this beautiful. Today he didn't.

War had hardened once supple parts of both Gwaine's body and mind; had ripped them open and forced them shut again and again, until it had changed how he looked at the world, why he got up in the morning and why he went to sleep at night. For a couple of weeks after the great battle he had forcefully ignored this, had lent a helping hand like all the other knights, until he finally admitted to himself that he couldn't go on like this.

To Gwaine, being alive was not merely a state of existence; it was an art. Like every art it needed to be practised or it would slip from the artists grip. So he had left Camelot. Alone in the woods he hoped to regain his serenity, to once again open his eyes to the beauty of every moment.

The hut he lived in now, he knew from his past wandering years. It had been abandoned for a long while and Gwaine had sought shelter there before. To reach it one had to ride three days north from Camelot, or walk even longer. At a distinct formation of rocks, one turned left into a barren dale which looked unpromising, no matter whether one was hunting for deer or company. Following this dale, though, one reached eventually a wood, and in this wood a clearing with a pond, and on the shore of this pond a small, cosy hut.

There Gwaine had made his home. The floor was now swept clean, a fire was burning in the hearth and outside a hare was hanging upside down next to the door, waiting to be skinned. Gwaine brought the knife to its paws, cut the fur just deep enough, working quick and skilfully until the hare was quite naked and as bright red as burning human flesh. Gwaine closed his eyes and wished even stronger for the rain to come.

Thyme, hare, barley, carrots and salt found their way into the steaming pot over the fire, where they bubbled merrily and filled the room with a heavenly fragrance. Gwaine savoured every spoonful, conscious of where the ingredients had come from, remembering every step that had lead to his evening meal.

His few dishes he cleaned in the pond. He knelt on a wooden plank he'd laid on the shore for the purpose of not getting his knees and shoes muddy. The water was calm and clear, and oddly warm in the way that water was warm whenever the air around it turned cool with the evening breeze. Branches swayed softly overhead; every now and again leaves drifted to the ground. A horse-chestnut fruit landed in the water next to Gwaine, splashed him with heavy drops, then bobbed on the surface. Brown-green and thorny it was, torn open on one side to reveal the conker inside. He picked it up and peeled the thick skin away. Underneath, it was round and smooth and dark brown. _Just like your eyes_ , Merlin had once said.

Gwaine missed him. Missed their comfortable evenings at the fireside, and their exciting ones in the tavern. He missed Merlin's easy laugh that had always made everything immediately better. Sometimes, when night had turned into morning, Merlin had fallen asleep in Gwaine's bed, had curled up like a small, tame cat. Gwaine would sink his fingers into Merlin's hair and see if Merlin would not purr. But this had been before Gwaine was forced to admit that every cat, however docile, also had claws and fangs.

He flung these thoughts along with the conker far out into the pond. The sky had grown dark, and inside waited a warm fire and his bed.

The first drops were not heavy enough to rouse Gwaine from his sleep. Only when the drizzle had built up to a heavy downpour did he slip from under his blanket and drowsily shuffle to the door. The air was filled with a multitude of smells. From the moss, trees, and ferns, from all around there seemed to bleed the very essence that made up these woods' nature. It dripped from the leaves, fused with the dirt, washed into the pond. Gwaine held out his hand from under the cover of the roof. Thick, velvety drops hit his hand and burst into smaller ones, slid temptingly along his fingers.

He followed without a thought. The water embraced him like a thousand tiny fingers caressing his face, the crown of his head, his neck. As it ran down his body it took with it all the tension he had held for these past months. Within moments his hair was drenched, and soon after so was his shirt. He tore at it, rid himself of his clothes, stepped out of his shoes to feel the wet ground squishing between his toes. With his arms thrown wide, his face turned up to the sky he stood until he began shaking; whether with the cold or relief he couldn't tell.

He passed his days with hunting or collecting berries and herbs. Often he would sit for hours staring out at the pond, deep in thought. Before long the trees lost their blood red leaves and the sun its glowing warmth. Bleakly it would shine through the fog as autumn gradually turned into winter.

With winter there came fierce cold and heavy snow. Gwaine now spent as much time as possible inside, bundled up in all his clothes, his blanket drawn tight around him against the cold. He would sit in front of the fire, while its sparks and flames cast eery shadows over the walls and his thoughts; they magnified whatever passed through his mind, lured his darkest fears out from where he had locked them away. He now saw that the flames were as hot and dangerous as Merlin's eyes in a battle. But unlike kind, friendly Merlin they wouldn't be able to fell a hundred men within the blink of an eye. How are you supposed to laugh with a friend, when you've watched him exerting more power than any one knight could ever hold? How do you hug him, when you've watched him kill whole armies with a single word?

Gwaine had longed for solitude when he had made his way here. Solitude and silence. But nobody is ever truly alone. There's always something. Or nothing. Which, as many will certify, is even more unsettling. So there was nothing to stop his mind spinning from fire to magic, to death, to life, to hate, to love, to eternity and back again. And while his thoughts visited dark places and light places and dark ones again, winter's ice and snow slowly melted into the ground. Soon snowdrops made their appearance, then croci and daffodils.

The days grew longer, and Gwaine's thoughts turned sunnier as well. By the time summer had filled the clearing with its syrupy heat he could barely remember why all this had weighed so heavy on his mind.

Gwaine lay bare-chested on his fishing boat, floating aimlessly on the pond, letting the bright sun warm his skin. He was roused from his half-sleeping state by a cracking of twigs in the bushes nearby. He sat up lazily, expecting to see a deer come to drink.

It took him a while to understand that what, or rather who, he saw was not an illusion.

Merlin, with hair tousled and face tanned, stood on the edge of the water, crunching up his face against the sun. It was impossible to tell whether he smiled or not. Now he lifted his hand to his brow, shaded his eyes to see more clearly. Then, apparently satisfied with what he saw, he let his hand drop, stretched it out in front of himself in a manner indicating he was about to use his magic. Gwaine's heartbeat quickened. But before he could give a shout of protest, or welcome, or he did not know what, there was a flash of gold, barely visible, and then the boat nearly capsized.

Merlin ungracefully gripped an oar to keep himself from toppling over. "Whoops. Sorry. Should have known." He turned around clumsily to take a seat and by doing so he pushed Gwaine's fishing rod overboard. "Um."

The waves lapped idly against the hull of the boat.

"Wha-," they both began to ask at the same time. This was followed by a perfectly mirrored gesture of "Go ahead", then another simultaneous attempt to ask "Wh-" before they finally dissolved into laughter.

Merlin's arms reached out for Gwaine. He pulled him into a tight hug, burrowed his nose in Gwaine's neck. "I've missed this," he said. "I've missed _you_." And then, very softly, "Why did you leave?"

Gwaine sat up a bit, but didn't let go of Merlin. He said, "I came to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to face only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."2

Merlin's gaze drifted away from Gwaine and took in all that was around them. "And did you find what you were looking for?"

Gwaine dipped one hand into the water, drew spirals with his fingers on the surface. "I did."

"And will you come back to Camelot and take with you what you found?"

"I will."

  
*

  
 **1** : [Quote](http://www.earlybritishkingdoms.com/arthur/kabattles.html) from Nennius' [Historia Brittonum](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historia_Brittonum).  
 **2** : Quote from [Henry David Thoreau](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_David_Thoreau)'s _Walden_. This quote, in it's original from, was also the prompt. I took the liberty to make some minor changes.


End file.
